DAIAD Annual Report 2004-2005
This text first summarizes the major developments of the Digital Access and Information Architecture Department (DAIAD) from July 2004 to June 2005.
Major developments/accomplishments
- Website redesign - The completion of the Libraries' Web Redesign Process is by far the most significant accomplishment. This effort, including the work of many individuals across the Libraries', attempted to put into practice the expressed needs and desires of students, faculty, and staff of the University. Since its implementation the Department has had few, if any, problems maintains the site and its content. A part of last year's goals was to improve navigation of the redesigned site as well as implement a sub-section search feature. After usability testing, we found these things were not deemed necessary. Users could navigate the site quite well, and search results were satisfactory. We believe in the "Don't fix it if it is not broken" philosophy. Becaue of resource restraints we were not able to implement the personalization features, nor the statistics gathering functions beyond rudimentary log file analysis.
- TERMinators - The website's information architecture is driven by a controlled vocabulary -- a set of facets and terms used to organize the website's content. A group named the TERMinators is responsible for maintaining this controlled vocabulary, and this process too has proven to be effective and useful.
- Campus-wide portal - In an effort to syndicate library content to wider audiences, the Department has inserted a number of library "channels" into the campus-wide portal. These channels are snippets of HTML coming from the database-driven website application. Through this effort the Department has begun to fulfill one of the Libraries' strategic planning items. This was a part of last years goals, and while our particular impelmentation is complete, software is never done. We anticipate improving our implementation to include a greater number syndication types other than lists of resources by subject. It can also include additional "quick searches", lists by format and/or audiences, and pointers to services as well as collections.
- MyLibrary - The database-driven website application is really an incarnation of the MyLibrary software sans the personalization. It provides us with the mean of incorporating data from the catalog, librarians, as well as OAI repositories into a central store. Reports can then be written against this database to create HTML pages, XML streams, or statistical reports. MyLibrary 3.0 is now being distributed as open source software from the University Libraries.
- University search - The Department has shouldered responsibility for the campus-wide search engine. This past year we have learned how to exploit the search engine's software, conducted focus group interviews and survey, and put what we learned from this process into practice. Because of these efforts many people believe the search engine is more useful. This was a part of last year's goals, and we consider this goal to be completed. We have done our best to exploit the search software and make the interface as useful as possible.
- Ockham - Work has continued on the sponsored National Science Foundation (NSF) Digital Library grant called Ockham. To date we have implemented an alerting service against OAI-accessible content, and we have demonstrated how the technique can be applied to NSF content as well as content from Project Euclid. We are currently working on a Find More Like This One service which exploits the use of automatically generated dictionaries and the WordNet thesaurus. Both of these implementations use a newly developed search protocol called SRU which is expected to ultimately replace Z39.50.
- Clavius - In conjunction with the Mathematics Librarian, the Department took the digitized works of Christoph Clavius and created a Web-based "page turner" application as well as distributable CD. Using these interfaces the totality of Clavius's works are made much more accessible when compared to microfilm or print materials. The methods used to create this access can be widely applied to other materials and collections in the Libraries. This was a part of last year's goals, and we consider this project completed.
- LOCKSS - The Department's investigation into LOCKSS all but concluded. Through this investigation we learned how easy it is to collect and archive electronic journal literature as long as the content is make LOCKSS-able. As a part of last year's goals to collect open access literature, we feel the LOCKSS experiment to be success and demonstrate one way to enhance access to library resources.
- Marketing - The Department has begun spearheading a library-wide marketing and promotion effort. Throughout the coming year we will be systematically marketing and promoting library services to targeted University audiences. At the end of this process we will have learned more about marketing and promotion, and we will be better able to articulate the degree which we desire to continue marketing and promoting our services and collections.
- Move to "glass house" - Much of our time in the past few months has been spent migrating our website to hardware located in the Office of Information Technology. This will provide the technical foundation for implementing an Institutional Digital Repository. This move is a part of the Libraries ongoing effort to implement an institutional digital repository.
Date created: 2005-07-01
Date updated: 2005-07-01
URL: http://www.library.nd.edu/daiad/annual-report-2004/
